Sunday, February 03, 2013

Secret of the Master’s Indwelling (3) ... Waiting on God:

by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
www.spiritsavvy.net

Finding your mission, Empowering your life through prayer,
Becoming a Missionary in the Marketplace
Leading others to be Missionaries in the Marketplace

The Secret of the Master's Indwelling is about digging our roots deep into God’s soil that bears fruit abundantly and gives us strength Supernaturally. Andrew Murray shows what we must do and be to become stalwarts of Faith.

Secret of the Master’s Indwelling, Chapter 3, Waiting on God:

Have you learned to live your life having God so really with you every moment, that in circumstances the most difficult He is always more present and nearer than anything around you?

Is God not able so to take possession that He can be nearer to me than anything in the world?


Why is it that God’s people do not know their God? And the answer is:

They take anything rather than God,—ministers, and preaching, and books, and prayers, and work, and efforts, any exertion of human nature, instead of waiting, and waiting long if need be, until God reveals Himself.  It is within reach, if God will reveal Himself. There is one necessity. It is saying every day: “I want more of God. I want God.”


That God always has the first place; and if that be given Him, He will take possession.

The one thing needful is: I must wait upon God. I want Him to take such possession of me that every moment He may work all in all in me.” How we ought to be silent unto Him, and wait upon Him!

God created us, that we might be the empty vessels in which He could work out His beauty, His will, His love, and the likeness of His blessed Son. That is what God is for, to work in us by His mighty operation, without one moment’s ceasing.

You are so occupied and filled with other things, religious things, preaching and praying, studying and working, so occupied with your religion, that you do not give God the time to make Himself known, and to enter in and to take possession. “Wait only upon God.”

“The presence of the Father was upon Him, and within Him, and around Him, and man could not touch His spirit. And that is what God wants to be to you and to me. Does not all your anxious restlessness, and futile effort, prove that you have not let God do His work? God is drawing you to Himself.

In prayer take more time to be still before God without saying one word. What is, in prayer, the most important thing? That I catch the ear of Him to whom I speak. We are not ready to offer our petition until we are fully conscious of having secured the attention of God.

Be still before God, and wait, and say: “Oh, God, take possession. Reveal Thyself, not to my thoughts or imaginations, but by the solemn, awe-bringing, soul-subduing consciousness that God is shining upon me bring me to the place of dependence and humility.

Waiting on God is the first and the best beginning for prayer. When we bow in the humble, silent acknowledgment of God’s glory and nearness, ere we begin to pray there will be the very blessing that we often get only at the end. Let us never be afraid to be still before God.

It will be with the one desire that nothing may stand between us and God, and that we may never be so occupied with hearing and listening as to forget the presence of God.

There are so many Christians who wonder that they fail; never thinking that all this may be dissipating the soul’s power and leading them to spend hours not in the immediate presence of God. I am afraid this is the great difficulty: that we are not willing to make the needed sacrifice for a life of continual waiting upon God. Do not think it too high, or too difficult. It is too difficult for you and me to attain, but our God will give it to us. Let us begin even now to wait more earnestly and intensely upon God. Let us in our closets wait in silence, and make a covenant, that with our whole hearts we will seek God’s presence to come in upon us.

Let that be the cry of our hearts,—More of God! More of God! More of God! And let us say to our souls, “My soul, wait thou upon God, for my expectation is from Him.”

The complete chapter on the Waiting on God:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/indwelling.vi.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library and many great classic works on Christian Growth, by the best of the Saints of Old who’s works have been passed down through the ages.

 

1 comment:

Gloria Rose said...

Rich food for my soul today, Dale, thank you.